It is with relief on all sides that we are able to leave behind discussion of gender specific clothing and return to topic, because last night I put on my wargaming frock and went round to James' house for some proper manly men rolling dice against men action. The first surprise of the evening was that, fed up with me wandering around the legendary wargames room in my socks, James had thoughtfully arranged for some fluffy white slippers to be provided for me; he's a sweetie.
Anyway, I find that neither he nor I had written about the first evening's play, so anything I say here will be lacking context. As usual, it was an enjoyable game and once again proved that winning isn't everything. It's hard to point specifically to where it all went wrong for Frederick the Great. One hypothesis was that it was when the second line of Austrian infantry blundered (i.e. rolled a double six) and ended up back on their own base line. What this meant that was when they came forward they could be targeted at the schwerpunkt rather than being strung out in front of the Prussian infantry as another juicy target when the first line was broken.
More likely is that collectively we still don't get the rules right and that many of the outcomes relate to that rather than anything else. The most overlooked rule has to be the penalty for trying to order units which are close enough to the enemy to qualify for an initiative move. In our defence the rules are appallingly written and disappointingly they vary in significant details from Pike & Shotte. On top of that the first house rule of wargaming club is that when someone (that's a euphemism for James) thinks of a new house rule it must be introduced immediately. The net outcome can be a bit difficult to deconstruct sometimes, but it looks good and passes the the time pleasantly - what more does one want?
We are back in the Renaissance next week, where we may remain until Derby Worlds,
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